For years, she led massive campaigns at Leo Burnett and Energy BBDO. Global CPG brands, household names, emerging startups—she’d done it all. Her teams won every major award in the industry. She led client relationships across every stage of growth. She was, by every definition, a heavyweight in the world of brand building.
But behind the scenes, she’d been feeling the itch.
“I always thought I’d stay on the agency side forever,” Anna says. “But the industry was changing. And I realized the version of it I loved wasn’t coming back.”
Last summer, that gut feeling became a clean break. BBDO was evolving its structure. Anna didn’t want to be part of the new direction. So she made the call.
And for the first time in decades—she had no boss, no brand book, no big holding company behind her. Just an idea.
That idea became Fearless.
It’s not just a consultancy. It’s a reflection of everything Anna’s built—and everything she’s walked away from.
“I called it Fearless, which, in hindsight, was a Jedi mind trick on myself,” she laughs. “Because now I have no choice. I have to be fearless every day.”
Fearless is built around four pillars: fractional CMO services, brand strategy workshops, advisory work with women founders, and keynote speaking. But the common thread isn’t what she offers. It’s how she approaches the work.
At Energy BBDO, Anna helped shape the agency’s positioning as “the entrepreneurial answer” inside a global network. She didn’t inherit client relationships—she built them from scratch. She pitched, won, and led accounts across every sector: from the Illinois Lottery to Kind Bars, from Quaker to KY, from the Cubs to The General.
And at every step, she asked the same questions she asks now:
Who are you serving?
What problem are you solving?
And what would happen if you made bolder choices?
That’s what her Fearless workshop is all about. It’s not just a brand strategy framework. It’s an excavation.
The first step? Identify fear-based behaviors inside the company—and stop them.
“When people make decisions from fear, it kills creativity,” Anna says. “It wastes time, it wastes money, and it blocks the bold thinking that leads to real growth.”
The framework works. She’s seen it. Companies hang the list of fear-based behaviors on their walls. They use it in cross-functional meetings. It becomes more than a marketing exercise—it becomes an operating principle.
But Anna didn’t get here by reading business books. She got here by doing the work.
Her first job was at a tiny automotive ad agency, cold-calling local car dealers. She cut her teeth fast. Then came Leo Burnett, where she spent nine years working with P&G. She helped push for the company’s first-ever sponsorship of the U.S. Women’s Soccer Team—years before they became a national icon.
“We had to fight to justify that investment,” she says. “But it was the right bet. And they won gold.”
Then came Nintendo.
Anna helped launch the GameCube, Game Boy Advance, and dozens of campaigns during the heyday of console wars. She helped create Nintendo’s first global brand campaign—Who Are You?—and learned what it meant to stay true to a brand, even when everyone else was chasing trends.
“I saw firsthand what happens when you don’t deviate,” she says. “It taught me the power of clarity.”
It was the kind of experience no one can fake. And now, she’s bringing it to founders, leaders, and teams who want that kind of clarity for themselves.
But this chapter feels different.
Because this time, she’s not just shaping other people’s brands. She’s building her own.
“I get to decide who I work with, what kind of work I take on, and how I show up,” Anna says. “That kind of agency—it’s something I didn’t even realize I needed until I had it.”
Fearless isn’t a reinvention. It’s a return.
A return to the kind of work that lights her up. A return to the kind of leadership she’s always practiced. And a return to the kind of creativity that only happens when fear’s no longer in the room.
